In: Restaurant Management - No comments - August 16, 2022 - By: info@restaurantify.com -

5 Hacks to Help Manage Your Restaurant

You can be making the best food and have the best design and location in your town, city, or country but if your restaurant is not adequately staffed, trained, operated, and maintained, none of that will amount to anything. Proper restaurant management is key to keeping your customers coming back.

Restaurant Management-The Role and Responsibilities

The role of a restaurant manager, whether it’s your restaurant or you work for one, is very crucial and extremely complex. Your job will most likely include all or a combination of the below:

Hiring and managing restaurant staff
Overseeing the daily operations
Sourcing and supplies management
Marketing – both digital and local
Customer relations
Crisis management
Accounting and finance

Basically, everything from planning and prioritizing to delegating and overseeing, it’s a well-rounded yet challenging job. We've got a quick guide to get you started.

Keep Your Menu Current, Evolving, Sustainable and Profitable

Food to a restaurant is what the soul is to the body. Of course, your food must be clean, nutritious, and delicious. It must also be unique in some or many ways, and you must be able to consistently replicate the dish every time you make and serve it.

Most importantly, you must be open to continue tweaking the menu as the times and tastes evolve. 72% of Gen Z consumers and 82% of millennials are more likely to order specialty food aka food that’s unique or is trending (Eg, cronuts, plant-based food, activated charcoal water, smoothie bowls, etc.)

Finally, the dishes on your menu must be money makers. i.e., people must order a wide variety of your dishes. Because you’ll source and prep for every item in your menu and if dishes go un-ordered, that’s money down the drain right there.

Offer Exceptional Customer Service

Of course, good food is crucial. But the thing that will not only help you stand apart but keep your customers coming back time and again is the service you deliver. This is important because your repeat customers will account for 72% of footfall and 80% of your revenue even though they will only make up about 20% of your customer base.

Hire Right and Clearly Define Roles and Responsibilities

It is important to hire people who are kind, passionate, empathetic, and enthusiastic. You want the person to enjoy the time they spend at work, this will reflect in their attitude toward your customers and happy customers mean profitable business!

Having said that, the restaurant industry has one of the highest employee turnover rates of 75% compared to any other industry. And for a restaurant to not just run smoothly and also grow, you need to be able to retain employees. Remember, every time you hire someone, you spend time and money training them. You want to capitalize on everything you’ve taught your hire.

Leverage Technology to Streamline Your Ordering

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One of the areas where most restaurants struggle, especially, as they are growing (and more so during peak hours) is order management. No matter how much you plan, there’s only so much you can do manually. One thing you can do to help yourself and your staff is to streamline your ordering.

An easy way to achieve this is to move your ordering system online. These days, it’s a lot easier to have your own online ordering system for take-out and table booking that can be integrated into your restaurant website which in turn connects to your POS. This means all your ordering and billing is recorded and communicated with minimal manual intervention and human errors.

Market Your Restaurant Both Locally and Digitally

Once you’ve figured out your operations, comes marketing. A crucial part of managing a restaurant is to ensure there is consistent footfall. This does not mean you have to have customers milling at your doors all day. Don’t get us wrong! It’s great if they do but this might not be the case always. So it’ll be your responsibility to ensure that you get the minimum number of covers to break even and make a profit for the day.

How can you achieve this? By staying in the minds of your existing customers and attracting new customers every day. For this, you will have to use a combination of email and mobile marketing, social media marketing, geo-tagging, targeted advertising both online and offline, etc. Remember, your potential customers are those close to your restaurant. So leverage local marketing techniques to be the first restaurant to pop in your customer’s minds when they are in your area.

Restaurant management is an exciting challenge where every day will be different and come with new challenges. If you are someone who can think on your feet and love giving people an experience of a lifetime, this is the job for you! While doing all this and more might sound almost impossible, If you hack it, you can crack it! But if you’re facing any challenges at all, talk to us!